Does anyone have a nice way to dynamically change the Houdini licences server with an environment variable on Linux? we currently try to set and use the variable SESI_LMHOST

but we have always found that the SESI_LMHOST variable is ignored by hserver and whenever a new user to the company first starts a houdini app (Mplay/Houdini) they will have the license server set to their local machine name and this is also saved to the users ~/.sesi_licenses.pref file

We then go though a tedious process of changing the users ~/.sesi_licenses.pref to the correct license server either by manually editing the file or by specifying the proper server with the hkey GUI which saves it for future license queries.

but if our license server ever changed we would have to go though the whole process again.

I can't imagine every studio does this, and assume we are missing a fundamental step in our houdini licencing setup.

Note: we have also tried running: ‘hserver -S $SESI_LMHOST’ before the houdini/mplay processes but this is often picked up too late as hserver takes a while to kick in.

Some ideas, YMMV:

- Ensure that SESI_LMHOST is always set to the desired license server whenever the user logs in. eg. ensure your users only use bash and set it in /etc/profile.d or /etc/profile (googled link [bash.cyberciti.biz]). Ideally, this value is taken from some site-wide shared configuration file.

- Are you starting hserver when the system boots up? This really simplifies the process so that the started hserver will use SESI_LMHOST off the bat.

- For seamless license server roll-over, you also set up redundant license servers [sidefx.com].


PS. Someone painstakenly tested and documented the process here which should provide additional details:
http://odforce.net/wiki/doku.php?id=licensingissues [odforce.net]

To summarize, Houdini will always try to use the SESI license server on the host that hserver is configured for, assuming that process is running. If that hserver process is not running locally, then Houdini will look for the ${SESI_LMHOST} environment variable. If that is set, then Houdini will try to use the SESI license server on that system and it will also write that hostname into ~/.sesi_licenses.pref (assuming that file doesn't already exist) and spawn an hserver process to use that system. If there is no hserver process running and ${SESI_LMHOST} is not set, then Houdini will look for the ~/.sesi_licenses.pref file. If that file contains “serverhost=<host>”, then Houdini will try to use the SESI license server on that system and it will spawn an hserver process to use that system. If there is no hserver process running, ${SESI_LMHOST} is not set and there is no ~/.sesi_licenses.pref file, then Houdini will try to use the SESI license server on the local host. It will also spawn an hserver process to use that system and write that local hostname into ~/.sesi_licenses.pref.

edward
- Ensure that SESI_LMHOST is always set to the desired license server whenever the user logs in. eg. ensure your users only use bash and set it in

hmm we always did this, with no luck, but hserver was never pre-started, I believe the houdini processes were starting it the first time they loaded on a system after login

edward
- Are you starting hserver when the system boots up? This really simplifies the process so that the started hserver will use SESI_LMHOST off the bat.

thanks we now pre-run hserver before a houdini or mplay process starts (although not at system startup, as this has a few sysadmin hurdles to pass first), followed by a sleep for 3 seconds to give the hserver time to kick in and read the SESI_LMHOST variable before the Houdini process starts

the nicest part is that hserver always over-writes the ~/.sesi_licenses.pref each time, so if the licence server variable is changed, it wil work in the future.

edward
PS. Someone painstakenly tested and documented the process here which should provide additional details:
http://odforce.net/wiki/doku.php?id=licensingissues [odforce.net]

thanks I also found and read that before I posted the question, but did not realise it was necessary to pre-start the hserver process rather than letting the houdini process automatically kick start it up.